


Worth Fighting For

by scooterbooter



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anorexia, EXPLICIT SELF HARM, Eating Disorders, M/M, Sad with a Happy Ending, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, tw self harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 18:10:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15540018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scooterbooter/pseuds/scooterbooter
Summary: He's just a soldier. Replaceable. Keith is tired. He wonders if these endless wars against a massive empire hold any meaning. He wonders if he is worth anything to anyone. He finds solace in unhealthy behaviors, but the thing Keith fails to see is that his team cares. They care so much more than he knows. *PLEASE MIND THE TAGS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED*





	Worth Fighting For

Keith awoke to the familiar darkness of his bedroom. He blinked groggily, and turned his head to look at the alarm clock glowing faintly on his bedside table. It read 1:39am. He sighed and rolled back over to stare at the ceiling once more, and though it had been only a few moments since he woke up, he was already painfully awake. 

These nights were common, one of the many constants in his life. On par with the frequency of this event were the contrasting nights where he would fall into a coma of sorts, sleeping for up to an entire day at a time. These nights, however, were worse. These were the nights where his insomnia brought out his deepest thoughts to the forefront of his mind, whereas during the day he would try, and succeed, to bury them, with the endless pull of the trigger on his gun, the endless formation of Voltron, the endless swirls of violence and liberation and the nonstop cycle of success and then failure.

Keith often felt like somewhat of a failure. He knew he was a gifted pilot, but other than that, he had difficulty identifying any other redeemable quality about himself. He knew this was war, though. Any insecurities he harbored about himself had to be squelched for the greater good. There was no time for doubt on the battlefield, no time for insecurity in the vacuum of space when he was trying to take down a hundred fighter ships by himself.

But at 1:45 am, when the alarm didn't have to go off for several hours, there was plenty of time for these things to rear their ugly heads and crash like a tsunami wave into Keith's brain.

"You are replaceable. A commodity." 

Fighting these thoughts used to be easier when he didn't believe them. In the beginning, he would hesitantly tell these things to Shiro, daring to hope for a "No, of course that's not true, Keith, you're one of a kind and irreplaceable." But this was not a romance novel, this was war. And Shiro wasn't exactly a master of words and comfort, great leader as he was.

Instead Keith got an uncomfortable stare and "We need you out there, buddy. Don't think like that, ok?" and in the end Keith didn't know why he always held other people to such high standards, expecting them to assure him and coddle him and tell him everything was going to be alright. Even as he resented being infantilized he couldn't help but crave these things.

Now he had accepted the universe for what it truly was. Even on earth he thinks he knew, but was more optimistic then and therefore more able to squash it down. And the truth was that only two things in life were truly certain: suffering and death, in that order. 

Was numbness suffering? he mused. It was the absence of anything, but was that pain? He didn't know.

Unable to wallow in his self pitying brooding any longer (it had reached 2:15am by this point) Keith pulled back his covers and sat up, placing his bare feet onto the freezing cold floor of his room. Clad only in his boxers and a t shirt, he left his door open and went to the bathroom to piss.

While he was going, his eyes strayed to the drawer next to the sink, which was partially open. The fluorescent lighting glimmered off Keith's most shameful secret. He pulled up his pants and moved to look at himself in the mirror. As always, he disliked what he saw before him. 

His hair had gone uncut for many months now and was pulled back in a half assed ponytail, many strands falling loose to frame his pale face. His cheekbones had hollowed out, and he realized he lost a lot of weight without noticing. He lifted up his shirt to see his ribs sticking out, his once prominent abs atrophied into a concave stomach. He looked at his face again and saw the dark circles under his eyes, which were dull and grey and utterly devoid of all emotion.

It scared him a little. "I look like a damn cancer patient," he muttered, dropping his baggy shirt to cover himself. Bitterly, he thought of how no one had commented on these developments, how no one seemed to care about his visible fall into the abyss. At the same time he resented his teammates for their ignorance, he was grateful, because then they would worry, and that would distract them from the war, and they could lose, and the Galra would rule for another ten thousand years and-

A trail of red trickled down his arm and he blinked. "Oh," he whispered. The tension in his shoulders suddenly melted away and he sighed. He hadn't realized his hand had slipped into the drawer to grab the small piece of metal. With a motion of his hand he inflicted another wound to his arm, more red following the previous trail. 

The whispers in his mind dulled to silence at last with every stroke of the blade. He was not proud of how he handled these feelings, and he knew on some level there was bound to be some better way to do so, but even so, the instant relief was addicting. In middle school he had cut to cope with his loneliness and general angst, but once he had been accepted to the Galaxy Garrison, where there were monthly physicals to assess the trainees' development, he needed to stop to avoid expulsion.

"Fat lot of good that did me," he thought. "Got kicked out anyway."

Another slice dug a bit deeper than before and he winced. He went too far again. His own lack of control over the activity which had once been the only means by which he could feel any control made him frightened. How long until he cut too deep, till the others found out, till his own shame was made known to the universe? Surely he would be cast out of Voltron immediately. Shiro's disappearance had proved that even the most important member of this team would be swiftly replaced.

He didn't want to cut again, but the thoughts of his own mortality were screaming in his head. He looked down at the blood pooling on the sink and briefly considered letting himself bleed out, even though he knew it wasn't deep enough for that. Regardless, he knew this type of cut was going to interfere with tomorrow (today's) training, and he needed to fix it up quickly to avoid being even more of a burdensome piece of shit.

He grabbed a towel from the closet and pressed it into his arm, the white cloth slowly turning red. He needed to get into the healing pods now to avoid being found out. 

As he made to leave the bathroom, he glanced behind him to see blood in a puddle on the floor, his razor on the sink, and decided to just leave it there to clean when he got back. This sort of cut should only warrant an hour in the pod, tops. He checked his clock on the way out of his room. It was three. He had plenty of time. Shiro woke up earliest, but even that was only around five.

The corridors of the castle were majestic and beautiful by day, but empty and cold at night. Keith found himself shivering as he staggered down the halls, breath making small puffs in the cool air. His toes were numb. Maybe Alteans existed in a slightly cooler environment than earth, he thought. Maybe he was just so skinny that he didn't have enough insulation to protect him without his armor. Maybe both.

It felt like hours had passed by the time he finally arrived in the pod chamber. With a shaking finger he opened the nearest one. He dropped the soaked through towel to the floor and climbed into the pod. He was so tired. So sleepy. His eyes closed and he heard the doors of the pod closing with a hiss. Before he went out, he swore he heard his name being called in the distance, and struggled to open his eyes. He saw a flash of concerned blue, and then everything was warm and black.


End file.
